CTERA Erases The Boundary Between File And Object To Deliver A Unified Enterprise Data Foundation For The AI Era

Unifies file and object storage into a unified data fabric, eliminating the trade-offs in performance, cost, and complexity and paving the way for faster AI-readiness.

New York, NY, March 11, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) --  CTERA, a leader in intelligent data management, today announced the availability of CTERA Fusion Direct, a transformative federated data architecture that eliminates the historical trade-off between enterprise file systems and object storage. By unifying these two domains into a single, high-performance data fabric, CTERA provides the foundational infrastructure required for the scale and speed of today’s AI workloads.

Historically, enterprises have had to manage two disconnected storage worlds: Traditional NAS systems, optimized for human collaboration and application compatibility; and object storage, designed for massive scale and machine-driven workloads. Bridging these worlds previously required data duplications, costly redundant infrastructure footprints, and performance-limiting translation layers that introduced latency and operational risk.

The Fusion family, consisting of CTERA Fusion Gateway and now CTERA Fusion Direct, focus on creating a unified fabric between NAS and Object storage. CTERA Fusion Direct is built on a fundamentally new architecture that enables files and objects to coexist natively within a single, federated global namespace. Data can be written as files and read as objects, or written as objects and read as files, with full bidirectional read and write capabilities. There is no file-to-object conversion bottleneck, no proprietary chunking scheme and no translation gateway mediating object access.

Enterprise applications and humans can access data over SMB and NFS exactly as before. Simultaneously, AI training clusters, HPC environments, and cloud-native services can access the same data over S3 and S3 over RDMA for wire-speed throughput. 

“Enterprises are struggling to unlock the full value of their unstructured data. The irony is that the file systems that make data useful for people often make it inaccessible for modern AI and analytics engines," said Karyn Price, Industry Director, ICT, Frost & Sullivan. "A platform that can fluently speak the languages of both worlds, presenting data as files for users and as objects for machines, removes a fundamental barrier to progress. This unified approach is essential for any organization looking to build a data foundation that is truly ready for the demands of AI."

Existing object storage buckets can be attached directly to the data fabric, enabling seamless access to contained data across edge locations and multi-cloud environments without migration, duplication, or modification. Organizations can instantly present object data as files on a global scale, activating distributed datasets across geographies while reducing infrastructure complexity.

"Our customers are looking for the limitless scalability of object storage and the broad compatibility of traditional file access," said Amit Rawlani, Sr. Director Technology Alliances & Solutions, Cloudian. “CTERA Fusion Direct is the first technology we’ve seen that delivers this without the performance trade-offs of a traditional gateway approach. By combining our best-in-class object storage with CTERA's native enterprise data and content services, we provide a powerful, no-compromise solution to unify the enterprise data landscape.”

Performance Built for the AI Era

Backed by U.S. Patent 12,007,952¹, CTERA Fusion Direct is engineered to leverage CTERA's core technology stack, maximizing both human collaboration and machine-scale data consumption:

• Native Zero-Copy Access: Data written through the CTERA Intelligent Data Platform is immediately available as standard S3 objects. Conversely, existing S3 buckets can be attached as-is, making their contents instantly accessible as files. No duplication, no latency, and no storage overhead. 
• High-Speed File Streaming:  High-resolution media and massive datasets can be streamed directly from object storage to file-based applications, eliminating the need for time-consuming local downloads.
• S3 over RDMA and GPU-Direct Access: By exposing native objects, CTERA Fusion Direct supports high-performance standards such as S3 over RDMA, allowing AI clusters and GPUs to read and write data at maximum bandwidth.
• Future-Proof Data Sovereignty: Data remains in standard S3 buckets, free from proprietary encapsulation or translation layer. This ensures organizations maintain full control over their information assets across any cloud or on-premises platform.

“The primary roadblock to enterprise AI has not been a lack of data, but the inability to use it effectively. The historic divide between data for human collaboration and data for machine analytics created friction and complexity that slowed companies down," said Oded Nagel, CEO of CTERA. "We've collapsed those silos. This fundamental shift in architecture unlocks the full potential of a customer's data, providing the unified data platform necessary to not just compete, but to lead in an economy increasingly driven by machine learning.”

Availability

CTERA Fusion Direct is now available as a core component of the CTERA Intelligent Data Platform. For more information please visit:  https://www.ctera.com/fusion-direct/  

CTERA’s social media resources include:

CTERA Blog: https://www.ctera.com/blog/ 

X: https://x.com/CTERA 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ctera/ 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CTERA/ 

About CTERA
CTERA is the global leader in the integrated data intelligence market enabling organizations of all sizes to efficiently and effectively manage, protect, and leverage their data across highly distributed environments. With a foundation built on security, scale, and seamless integration, the CTERA Intelligent Data Platform empowers organizations to align their data management strategies to continuously deliver against today’s business needs and tomorrow’s vision.

Contact:

Joanne Hogue

Smart Connections PR for CTERA

Email: joanne@smartconnectionspr.com

410-658-8246